Glee creator Ryan Murphy couldn’t have better timing if he planned it this way from the start.

One week after he urged a boycott of Newsweek over a column suggesting gay men couldn’t play straight roles, Murphy uncorks a Glee episode tonight that satirizes the piece’s attitude like he wrote it in an angry, caffeine-fueled haze the night after the magazine hit newsstands.

It’s an episode that’s been anticipated for months, starring Neil Patrick Harris as a longtime glee clubbing nemesis of teacher Will Schuester, warped by a frustrated attempt to build a performing career into hiding his proclivities and leading a “show choir conversion group” to wean himself of his primal urges.

Directed by Joss Whedon, who featured Harris in the buzzed-about YouTube sensation Dr.Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, tonight’s episode once again uses passion for show choir as a jokey stand in for homosexuality -- with stars such as Molly Shannon and Best in Show co-star John Michael Higgins struggling to shake off the urge to sing show tunes onstage.

“Whenever anything bad would happen, I’d just say ‘Let’s put on a show,’” said Higgins as a recovering glee clubber named “Russell. “Well, guess what? Puttin’ on a show about your father’s prostate cancer will actually just make him more depressed about the situation.”

“Show choir kills,” Harris’ character says, supportively.

It’s an old tactic; substitute something silly for the subject you’re really talking about, so the absurdity of the situation rings through clearly.

Along the way, Murphy created a most elegant rebuttal to Newsweek’s thesis, starring an actor whose career is mostly testament to how off base the column was in the first place: Doogie Howser himself.

Proudly out as a gay man offscreen, Harris plays a heterosexual on Glee cool enough to steal Mr. Schue’s girlfriends in high school and twisted enough to wind up in a compromising position with resident villain Sue Sylvester, herself played by a gay woman (I can hear the gleeks squealing now over the irony).

Harris has played many straight guys through his career, from Amadeus’ Mozart onstage to womanizer Barney Stinson on CBS’ How I Met Your Mother – a fact glossed over by Newsweek writer Ramin Setoodeh, a gay theater critic who proclaimed in his April 26 column “While it's OK for straight actors to play gay…it's rare for someone to pull off the trick in reverse.”

It's obvious the column is much more about how the author perceives gay actors playing straight -- and by extension, how the public reacts -- than what the actors are doing themselves. But even though the essay's author has defended himself with those points, too much of his commentary is wrapped up in faulting Promises, Promises star Sean Hayes and Glee actor Jonathan Groff for failing to nail heterosexual roles.

Which is why Glee luminaries Kristin Chenoweth and Murphy swooped in to protest, with the producer comparing Setoodeh’s thesis to saying black people could only play domestics.

But it turns out Murphy needn’t have bothered – unless he wanted some free publicity. Because tonight’s
Glee provides a more potent rebuttal, wrapped in a giddy affirmation of just how cool it can be to follow your passions, regardless of the stereotypical boxes some folks want to stick you in.

About the blog

The Feed is your source for television news, reviews and commentary. A group of Tampa Bay Times writers will blog about everything from their current TV obsessions to the changing TV/media landscape (binge-watching galore!). Let's all geek out over our favorite shows together.

As a wee TV fanatic, Times pop music critic Sean Daly first learned to tell time via Lee Majors classic "The Six Million Dollar Man." On family trips, instead of asking "Are we there yet?" he would inquire of his parents: "How many more Six's?" Thus, the concept of an hour. Adorable, right? Not nearly as cute: An adult Sean wears a Tigers hat not to support Detroit but because Tom Selleck wore one on "Magnum, P.I." It's sad really.

Michelle Stark is a Times writer, editor, designer and unabashed TV nerd. Her millennial TV-watching habits rely on Netflix, Hulu and Amazon instead of traditional cable, but she never misses her favorite shows, which include everything from Girls, Parenthood and New Girl to high-minded dramas like Mad Men and Homeland. She never met a reality dance show competition she didn’t like.

Sharon Kennedy Wynne is a Times writer and editor part of that first generation of toddlers raised on Sesame Street. Her TV tastes are eclectic. She's still a big fan of Sesame Street, but also darker fare like American Horror Story and Scandal. As our resident reality TV fan (though she's ashamed to admit it), she has complex theories on Survivor, Amazing Race and Big Brother strategies.